“In 2010, I was in need really to show people I came here not for just pay [reasons]. But I showed a few good races in 2010, but it looked like it was not enough for them. But then I think in 2011 they are not allowed to talk any more about this because the pay driver cannot achieve their first podium and then to finish so many times on the points. I think this is not right to talk about [these] things. Also [to] be quicker than Nick [Heidfeld] and be quicker than Bruno [Senna] and other drivers. So I think we need to forget about [suggestions that] we came just for pay.”

Luis Perez-Sala: “The idea as of now is to race him the whole season, but nothing is taken for granted in F1, you have to work for your place in every race. But as things stand, Narain and Pedro will race the entire season.”

“Vettel is a modern [Juan Manuel] Fangio, really, in Formula One. I can’t see, other than his natural ability, how he is that good, how he can be that good. I think Vettel is quite outstanding, but then he has got the best car, which is fair enough because normally the best driver gets the best car.”

Comment of the day

I know this is entirely the correct move, but as a Trulli fan, and as a Formula 1 fan, this is a sad day for me.

The first F1 season I watched in full was 1997. After his Monaco win the year before Panis was already my favourite driver, but in 1997 I took a shine to two young drivers: Fisichella and Trulli.

Now Panis has been gone for some years, Fisichella bowed out gloriously in 2009 and, now that Trulli?óÔé¼Ôäós gone, none of my original ?óÔé¼?£favourite drivers?óÔé¼Ôäó are in the sport any more. It?óÔé¼Ôäós a personal end of an era for me, and I?óÔé¼Ôäóm very sad now.

Trulli was one of the good guys. Always friendly on the grid, always with a big smile on his face and he was one of the guys you always felt happy for when he got a podium. His qualifying performances were at times mesmerising, and I think the ‘Trulli train’ was a combination of his Saturday performances and another underrated talent he had ?óÔé¼ÔÇ£ defensive driving.

All the best to Petrov though, he deserves a seat and I hope he does well.Dan Thorn

I really think that Trulli has come over as classy during the past few weeks/months. He’s not spat his dummy out and criticised the team, even though he probably knew all along he’d be replaced.

If you read all his quotes, he comes over as a really nice guy. Alas, being nice doesn’t make you fast. It’s just a shame that it’s not somebody more exciting that’s taking his seat, like Bianchi or even Alex Rossi.

Heâ€™s not spat his dummy out and criticised the team, even though he probably knew all along heâ€™d be replaced

He did in December – he tore into both Vitaly Petrov and Bruno Senna, accusing Petrov in particular of being “uncommitted” and “in no position to lead the team” (referring to Renault). He had absollutely no reason to criticise either driver at the time, unless he felt threatened by one of them. And he was adamant that he would stay with Caterham as recently as four days ago. Trulli’s reaction to being replaced has been graceful, but he fought tooth and nail to keep his seat.

Who knows though, Kova v Petrov could get interesting.

Petrov is from Vyborg, and Kovalainen is from Suomussalmi. Both have been historical flashpoints between the Russians and the Finns – the Finns controlled Vyborg after the Russian Revolution, while the Soviets occupied Suomussalmi during the Winter War in 1939 and 1940. Of course, these conflicts are long since dead, and neither Petrov nor Kovalainen live in the towns they were born in anymore, but I find the historical relationship between those towns to be a very interesting piece of trivia.

I try to ignore PM, If-state-my-opinion-loud-and-long-winded-enough-it-becomes-fact, at all times, but i must intervene.

Our dearest neighbors never occupied any stretch of land within our borders, and certainly not the town of Suomussalmi. There are 25 000 unmarked lots on the road from the (then) border to the town to mark their one month excursion, tho.

And as far as Vyborg goes, it was built by the Finns, in fact most of the city buildings are still from that era.
It’s a lovely looking place, you should visit.

Petrov’s father had discussions early in his career to perhaps have Vitaly drive under a Finnish international license in order to attract Finnish sponsors. That would’ve only been posssible if one of his (the fathers) parents was born in Finland.

And bringing up historical conflicts is just so Godwin’s Law that it’s just sad to see it here on F1F

I try to ignore PM, If-state-my-opinion-loud-and-long-winded-enough-it-becomes-fact, at all times, but i must intervene.

That just goes to show how little you read my posts.

Our dearest neighbors never occupied any stretch of land within our borders, and certainly not the town of Suomussalmi. There are 25 000 unmarked lots on the road from the (then) border to the town to mark their one month excursion, tho.

I said the Soviet forces “occupied” the region: they established a military presence within the soverign land of another nation that they were at war with. I did not say that the border was changed so that Suomussalmi was in Soviet territory.

And as far as Vyborg goes, it was built by the Finns, in fact most of the city buildings are still from that era.

Which is why I used the word “controlled”. Vyborg is located on the Karelian Isthmus, which, after the Russian Revoltion, was controlled by the Grand Duchy of Finland until 1917, the Kingdom of Finland in 1918, and the Republic of Finland from 1918 until the 1940s when Vyborg was returned to Soviet control.

The difference between Vyborg and Suomussalmi is that the border actually changed so that Vyborg was in both Finland and the Soviet Union. Suomussalmi, on the other hand, was simply occupied by Soviet forces; it was never administered by the Soviet government. Which is why I used the terms “occupied” and “controlled” to describe them – because there is a difference between what happened.

And bringing up historical conflicts is just so Godwinâ€™s Law

Godwin’s Law states that “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one”. It’s a little strange that you should bring this up, because to the best of my knowledge, neither Vyborg nor Suomussalmi was ever under German control during Operation Barbarossa.

For the record, I was simply pointing out the rather strange coincidence that Caterham’s drivers should both come from towns that are inherently related to a) important points in both Finnish and Russian history, and b) bloody periods involving both countries. No other team has drivers with such a bizarre connection.

Err, how can it be if they haven’t announced the 2014 calendar? Having Petrov on the grid opens the possibility of getting the Russian market more interested in F1, thereby generating sufficient interest to encourage either the government or private investment in the Sochi event. Look at what happened to the Circuit of the Americas and this years event; the same could easily happen in Russia so I think it’s a bit premature to imply that the Russian GP is ‘confirmed as taking place’

Picking Vitaly over Jarno makes sence. Though Trulli did help the team forward he is clearly beyond his best. Now the time has come for the team to work on what has been built so far with a younger driver, who off course can also bring in money. And besides the money, Petrov isn’t the worst driver of the ones that reached F1 in recent years.

Trulli just seemed to annoy me in his later years. He had some good times at Renault, and his qualifying performances were usually really good to watch.
But after he whinged and whinged about his collision with Sutil in Brazil in ’09 when it was clearly his fault, and all the whinging while at Caterham (Lotus), I just lost interest in him as a driver. I felt he just faded away a bit.

Vettel’s sponsor has a race team. Petrov’s sponsor partners with a race team. Someone always has to pay for you to drive. A team is not run on fresh air.
Some sponsors leave the team to choose the drivers, others have a strong influence on the choice of drivers.

And with the tiered structure of feeder series and the demand for a superlicence in order to compete in Formula 1, any driver who is a pay driver needs to at least have some talent to get into Formula 1. Gone are the days of pay drivers like Jean-Denis Deletraz, or rich playboys with more money than talent who fancied themselves to be racing drivers.

Who is GP2 champion. And he did much better compared to Rubens Barrichello than Vitaly Petrov did compared to Robert Kubica. The only reason why people think Maldonado is a bad driver is because he was provoked into doing something stupid in Belgium.

Yes, Hamilton had every right to overtake Maldonado. What he did not have the right to do was compromise Maldonado’s lap. Replays show that Hamilton pushed Maldonado wide coming out of the Bus Stop, out onto the wet surface of the circuit. Given Maldonado sector times and the drying state of the circuit, he was almost certainly going to better his qualifying position … until he was forced out onto the wet circuit. The stewards agree with me, since they gave Hamilton a reprimand and only hit Maldonado with a grid penalty. Observing Hamilton’s altercations with other drivers – Massa, Kobayashi, Maldonado in Monaco and so on – and his reactions to them, it’s fairly obvious that he had no respect for anyone else (except possibly Jenson Button). Hamilton provoked Maldonado into doing something stupid. That doesn’t exonerate Maldonado from dangerous driving, but it does demonstrate that the incident at Spa is not proof that Maldonado is the worst driver in Formula 1. Especially when you look at the number of times he out-qualified and out-raced Rubens Barrichello. Even when Barrichello came out on top, Maldonado was usually only a position or two behind him. But no, one stupid incident in Belgium and Williams’ willingness to accept Venezuelan petrodollars, and everyone accuses Maldonado of being the worst driver in Formula 1. Looking at the class of 2011, that dubious honour should go to Karun Chandhok.

What replays show is that maldonados time through the second sector wasn’t good enough and he didn’t pick it up in the last as was the case with everyone stuck behind him. On top of which maldonado was first into the last corner and took his own line and then nearly stopped the car dead which allowed hamilton up the inside. Maldonado chose his line and decided to go crawling speed or are you now going to come out with some preposterous garbage about hamilton having a remote control to maldonados car? So hamilton ruined nothing and provoked nothing. Giving lewis a reprimand was the default for stewards in 2011 and maldonado was blummin lucky not to get a race ban for his counter reaction.

What ever though even if we take your waffle as truth (which would be catastrophically silly given how wrong i have already proved you to be) hamilton got a reprimand maldonado a grid drop. No matter how much you try to make it seem the opposite way round by saying “only hit maldonado with a grid penalty” you are fooling no one into thinking he got the lighter punishment because we are f1 fanatics. We know our sport and we know a grid drop is far more severe than a reprimand.

“not proof that Maldonado is the worst driver in Formula 1.”

I never said that no one ever said that

This is what i said in full

“There was no provocation donâ€™t even attempt to claim that. Hamilton (as would any driver stuck behind a slower one) had every right to overtake him maldonado lost his temper simple as.”

Where what how who why would you read that as me saying maldonado is the worst driver in f1? You couldn’t read it that way no one could so why do you make these counter arguements to points that no one has made? Do you think maldonado is the worst driver in f1? Is that what it is? Maybe your whole comment wasn’t intendid for me. Are you having a conversation with your self and posting half of it on the web. That’s what it seems like because after your first full stop I see nothing in your comment related to anything I said. Given that as already pointed out from end to end.

“Replays show that Hamilton – Maldonado into doing something stupid.”

these are complete lies

Then one half sentance of truth. “That doesnâ€™t exonerate Maldonado from dangerous driving,”

Then you go back off on this quest to prove maldonado is not the worst driver in f1.

“but it does demonstrate – honour should go to Karun Chandhok.”

Even though you’re the only person i have ever seen posting the words “maldonado” “worst” “driver” “in” “f1″ in any order at all.

Honestly I’m not sure why you included all that in a direct reply to my comment as i said after the first full stop non of your comment is related to mine. Insert confused emoticon.

And with the tiered structure of feeder series and the demand for a superlicence in order to compete in Formula 1, any driver who is a pay driver needs to at least have some talent to get into Formula 1. Gone are the days of pay drivers like Jean-Denis Deletraz, or rich playboys with more money than talent who fancied themselves to be racing drivers.

Perhaps you didn’t explicitly say “Pastor Maldonado is the worst driver in Formula 1″, but it’s very difficult to read your intended meaning any other way, considering that the likes of Deletraz are considered to be some of the worst drivers of all time.

I’d have to agree with @TheBrav3. Maldonado basically parked his car at the bus stop so Hamilton overtook him. Maldonado may have gotten angry as a result of it, but he shouldn’t have been fannying around at the bus stop in the first place. If any of us parked at a bus stop we’d be punished, Maldonado was too ;-)

Vettel’s sponsor has a race team. Petrov’s sponsor partners with a race team. Someone always has to pay for you to drive. A team is not run on fresh air.
Some sponsors leave the team to choose the drivers, others have a strong influence on the choice of drivers.

The analysis of th Ferrari highlights something I’d said earlier. The regulations brought on t drop the nose of the cars has not achieved anything, we even have teams running a higher nose than they did last year.
I personally don’t mind the high noses, but if a regulation is introduced on the grounds of safety, then it must achieve its intended objective.
This also goes to show that a good portion of the text in th FIA’s rule book are just totally pointless and only serve to complicate the job of the car designers

“I personally donâ€™t mind the high noses, but if a regulation is introduced on the grounds of safety, then it must achieve its intended objective.”

Not only must it achieve its intended objective, but more fundamentally a safety regulation must not make the cars more dangerous. As an engineer, I believe it makes them significantly more dangerous, which alarms me.

I found out today that the static ‘crash’ testing that checks to see whether the nose can be pushed off the chassis applies only to horizontal loading. With no vertical test to pass, the majority of the new designs of noses will inevitably be weaker than the old ones if they ever get pushed downwards, and particularly, upwards. This weakness applies to the nose’s overall discontinuous structural shape and in particular to the 4 connections to the chassis.

With such an abrupt step so close to the rear face of the nose structure, it would be unwise to maintain the positions of the 4 connections at the outermost corners of the face, as the loads on the upper 2 connections would not be transmitted smoothly into the nose’s main structure without a major stress concentration, resulting in a localised failure near these connections when loaded.

Therefore the (wiser) designers will have been forced to bring the upper 2 connections down, closer to the lower connections. I believe I’ve seen this decision in some of the designs. But bringing the upper and lower connections closer together reduces their leverage distance, which will mean that to resist a given upward (or downward) load on the nose, these connections will have to bear a greater tensile or compressive load than they would have with the designs from the previous regs, where it was a no-brainer to position the 4 connections at the outer corners. But with the push off crash test only being in the horizontal axis, and the horizontal spacing remaining unchanged, there is no design incentive for these connections to be increased in strength (and weight).

Upwards loads on noses are by no means unheard of, particularly when one considers the primary danger of open wheel racing, whereby the car behind hits the upward spinning rear face of the tyres on the car ahead. If the nose is lost, the primary ‘crumple zone’ has gone, and in this scenario, the car is still traveling (through the air) at relatively unabated speed. A frontal impact with no nose would produce prodigious decelerative g-forces upon impact, owing to the massive strength and stiffness of the chassis itself, as well as its now flat front face.

I don’t know what the rule makers were thinking when they introduced this rule. I appreciate it is hard to specify rules in an entirely watertight way, but how much more difficult would it to have been to define a triangular ‘no-go’ volume instead of a rectangular one. This could have also gone further in lowering the nose tip, thereby achieving the rule’s intention, which has now been shown to have failed, with news that the Ferrari nose tip is now higher than in 2012.

The new rule has also failed in that the noses tips are far sharper and slender than ever before, such that they will be more adept at piercing another car in a T-bone shunt. I believe that they are so much sharper because of the reduced height from top to bottom of the rear part of the nose following the step. So even in the exact scenario for which the nose rule was introduced to make safer, it has instead made the cars more dangerous.

Those hoping that the Mclaren will beat everyone and therefore force all the teams to adopt their prettier, stepless low nose, well, could have to wait a long time, as it would require a completely new, lower chassis design, which is a big step to take for any team.

No, it is up to the FIA to realise their mistake and alter the rule so that it defines a triangular rather than a rectangular section. Everyone designs new noses, all the above problems solved with relatively minimal outlay. It would probably disadvantage Mclaren a bit, but, well, safety is important.

Sorry, I am posting this comment here and also in the most relevant F1F news story specific to noses (http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2012/01/26/ugly-f1-cars-2012/), as I want to raise awareness of this issue. I am really surprised nobody has piped up on this – it’s not rocket science. I think the rule has been in the public domain since last summer.

It is not a surprise for me,what teams are doing these days they are taking experience driver to help the team develope the car then take in people who can pay them.Petrov in two season did some decent job but that doesn’t mean Catherham will dump their driver like that way.

I also have the same feelings Dan Thorn so eloquently summarised in his COTD. Like him I started fully watching F1 in 1997, and it’s sad to see Trulli go in a way.Although I wasn’t impressed with his demeanour during last season, I remember when he was a young talent and will never forget his podium at the Nurburgring in 1999 The only driver I have left from my early years in F1 is my idol Michael Schumacher. It will be a sad day for me when that tie to the past is severed.

Then again, I’m sure many commenters on this site have already seen multiple generations come and go! :)

it might be available on youtube – it was at one point. panis drove a classic race, deserved 3rd place and overtook many cars (and took irvine out, hehe).
he ‘lucked’ in a bit when hill and then alesi retired (i was very upset, big alesi fan – who isn’t?), but still a great win, especially after holding on under pressure from clothead at the end.

I hate Moss,everything he said just makes me angry.No disrespect to Vettel two WC but I think Alonso is the best driver out there, Fangio is probably the best of the rest in F1 how on earth you compare him with Vettel?? Who once just couple of season’s back was known as ‘Crashkid’.Some drivers just can’t be compare with others,Vettel is a class of his own like Hamilton & Button,Alonso & Schumacher, Senna & Prost,some say Moss was the best driver not to win a WC,glad he didn’t!

In my view, Moss is correct. I think Vettel only has one more level to climb to come close to the greatest driver ever: Jim Clark. And anyway, he comprehensively outperformed Webber, himself being no slouch last season in identical equipment: 0.9 secs faster in quali. That is an incredible margin.

Sorry, but I’m not so sure about that identical equipment. Ok, I agree, that Vettel is one of the bests in quali, but that does not explain the constant kers failure on only Webbers car /at the first few races/. After that Webber was almost in the same position as Massa, the only difference is, that Ferrari os open about team orders, while RedBull is not. /Maintain the gap (Silverstone), Dont do anything stupid(Suzuka), compromised box strategy in Korea/. It must be very hard to beat a teammate, when you know that he is not allowed to challange you, either by orders, or by strategy. -SARCASM- And just think back, when Webber had some chance of beating Vettel in the race, what did Vettel say to the team: ‘Be wise now’. So you have it, I’m not saying that Vettel is not a pretty damn good driver, but the points compared to Webber is not a valid point in this argument. Time will tell how great Vettel is, nobody can state things like this.

Except that we can definitely state that “He comprehensively outperformed Webber”, and in identical equipment. A few excuses about KERS failures (of which even Vettel also had a few like at Silverstone and Catalunya) don’t provide any evidence that he was given inferior equipment. The facts speak for themselves, across three years.

“Who once just couple of seasonâ€™s back was known as â€˜Crashkidâ€™.”

By an upset Martin Whitmarsh, after the second of two whole collisions SV caused in 2010. Alonso crashed out of the same race, but because it wasn’t into Jenson Button, he naturally wouldn’t get upset about that.

@david-a Ok, no proof for inferior equipment but there is proof of inferior treatment. I’m not saying Webber is better, than Vettel, my point was, one cannot compare Vettel to Fangio or Clark, by the point difference in one season compared to Webber.

Also, the Crashkid nickname was given after Spa, but as you say he did cause 2 collisions in 2010, and I remember a pretty one from 2009 with Kubica in Australia, we could have seen some nasty ones this year too, his pass on Alonso at Monza was great, but ir yould have ended like the Trulli-Sutil in Brazil 2009, also in Suzuka, where he forced Button to the grass, could have ended like that.

Im not an exper on Vettels F1 career, but he might had the same amount of crashes in his first 3 years, as Hamilton. And in advance of the raising question, Yes in my eyes both of them Crashkids, although very fast ones :D.

@bag0 Indeed, he (and Lewis) have caused collisions, so at one point could have been considered fast but error prone.

However, I don’t think we even need to compare Vettel to Webber to start comparing him to champions of the past as @xjr15jaaag did. His consistency alone in 2011 did the talking. I wouldn’t say he’s better than Fangio or Clark, but if he keeps up his performance or even finds a new level, the comparisons will become even more valid, so I basically disagree with @wasif1 ‘s comment.

And what does Trulli have to offer that Petrov does not? The ability to detect power steering faults that always seem appear whenever he has a bad qualifying performance but never seem to be diagnosed by the engineers and are totally not excuses?

I don’t feel there is any need for this kind of Trulli bashing. I have no reasons to believe his power steering problems were not genuine, in fact in a recent Autosport interview he said he had this problem from his karting days, and the bigger F1 outfits he drove for were always quickly able to solve the problem for him.

As an aside, I thought you would be happy with Petrov signing at Caterham, though I did not anticipate this happiness would manifest itself in such an odd way. Over the past two days F1F has been inundated with your comments, quite a few of them were a bit strange, or just not very nice. Have you gone into some kind of prisoner-monkeys-overdrive?

I believe Trulli is one of those drivers that needs a good car to perform. Some drivers just drove past the problem (which is probably bad for development), Some drivers just complain for the tiniest problem (which is probably good for development). Of course it is better to have a driver that can detect the tiniest problem but still be able to drove around that, but apparently Trulli can’t.
I don’t think Petrov can offer the same amount of feedback compared to Trulli… heck, I don’t think Kovi is better than Trulli in this regard. But in terms of speed, I don’t think Petrov is slower than Trulli… Petrov might even be faster if the car isn’t really good.